Version 0.1.0-2018-03-10 is now avaialble for download from the usual location. Changes are as follows:

– HE ammo type has been added to guns, also ammo tracking
– Minor changes to interface
– Additional enemy units added: tankettes and armoured cars
– Major fix to a crash when resolving FP on infantry units
– Infantry and guns can now see 6 hexes away
– Added a check for units to regain concealment (unknown status) at the start of their turn
– Objectives will no longer be placed adjacent to a map edge
– Added a rarity rating for enemy units, rare units will be selected less frequently for enemy spawns
– Added alt+arrow keys for selecting crewman and changing action in Crew Action phase
– Critical hits with HE on infantry and guns now apply 2x effective firepower
– MG attacks within 2 hexes have a chance to penetrate armour
– Slightly reduced bonuses for firing at an acquired target

I’ve uploaded a slightly updated version of the weekly build, since I found some potentially game-crashing bugs while working on it today. Download link is the same as before. Changes are as follows:

ArmCom2 version 0.1.0-2018-03-04

– Unit portrait (if any) will now be displayed when an enemy unit is spotted
– Fixed bug where game would prompt player to fire again when an enemy unit maintained RoF
– Fixed bug where AI Loader crewmen were being set to the wrong/outdated order
– Enemy spawning is now done in a more intelligent fashion

I’ve just updated the weekly build, downloadable from the usual location. I have tested it on Windows 10 and it works. That’s not to say there won’t be other bugs and crashes, but at least Win10 players can progress past the main menu now. Changelog follows:

0.1.0-2018-03-03 Changelog

– Added a fix for the crash on Windows 10, it’s a temporary fix but should work for now
– Area Fire (MG) attacks now more likely to have an effect, and different levels of effects
are possible: partial, full, and critical
– Area Fire attacks now include negative modifiers for firing at a target in higher elevation,
and for vehicle size class if they target is Known
– Changed the style of the hex highlight when pop-up message is displayed, and also had the message switch to the bottom of the viewport if it would otherwise cover up the highlighted hex
– Fixed a few display bugs
– Changed the penalty for chance of additional extra moves beyond the first
– Added the option to switch to a half-size font, making the game window smaller
– Started to add crew statuses; no effect yet
– Added possibility of Rate of Fire for player; if the weapon is a Gun, there must be a
Loader on Reload action
– Added arrow keys as alternates for WASD

Just a quick note that the current weekly build crashes consistently on Windows 10 right upon starting a new game – I’ve figured out the problem though and the next weekly build, with updates and new features, should work fine on Windows 10. I should post the new weekly build on the 3rd March after I do some additional work on the AI and some playtesting.

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A new weekly build is available from the usual download location. The biggest change from last week is the addition of machine guns and Firepower attacks. These will not (yet) harm an armoured target, but are effective against infantry. Infantry are also armed with anti-tank rifles which have a small but significant chance of penetrating your tank. Each individual crewman or personnel within a unit now has his own morale value, the average of which is used to calculate an overall morale rating for the unit. When non-armoured units are hit by FP attacks, they may be forced to test against their morale to avoid being Pinned. Additional possible effects, including Breaking and Reduction, are planned.

A number of minor bugs and crashes have also been fixed, but there’s still much to be done. The result display for resolving FP attacks on a target in particular is not yet very clear in how it presents the information.

At the beginning of this year I took a hard look at the state of Armoured Commander II and decided to start fresh. I wasn’t happy with how the game was developing and I had learned a lot over the previous few months that would be difficult to implement in an established code base. So I started with a new, empty Python file and copied over each element of the game piece by piece, making changes and improvements along the way. Today I’m posting the first weekly in-progress build in a long time because I’m pretty pleased with how it is now coming along. The current game is still very limited but the core elements are in place. Many of the features I was working on late last year haven’t yet been re-added, but they are on their way.

More than anything else with this re-start I wanted to re-integrate your tank’s crew into the game, so I devoted a good chunk of the screen to them, and I went back to a modified crew action system similar to that in ArmCom1. This brings the focus of the game back to the men in the tank, including yourself as the commander, which I think was one of the strengths of ArmCom1. You can see details about your crew in the F3 menu; only the perception stat is used for now, others will be important later on.

The weekly build is available at the usual location. I’ve used a different packager this time from previously (PyInstaller) so if it doesn’t run on your machine please email me and let me know. I will continue to work with the packager options to try to produce a cleaner and more compatible build. If you don’t run Windows you can always download the source from GitHub.

EDIT: I’ve just uploaded a hotfix that should prevent crashes when displaying crew names with non-ascii characters.

Two recent developments in ArmCom2: I’ve re-done the spotting system, changing it from a deterministic system (units are always spotted given a set of conditions) to a roll-based one with a couple automatic cases. Each crewman has a chance to spot unknown enemy units in his line of sight, which depends on his position in the tank and his hatch status. The roll is based on the crewman’s Perception stat plus modifiers such as range, intervening terrain, etc. This means that all units in the game will need fully modeled crew so that eventually all units will use the same system. In addition, there’s a couple situations in which units are always automatically revealed, such as moving in the open, or firing within close range of an enemy unit.

I’ve also added a new pop-up message window system, initially for use with spotting messages. I think it’s a big improvement on the pop-ups in ArmCom 1, since the window only appears in one of two positions (top half or bottom half of map viewport) rather than popping up anywhere on the map view. My plan is to use this for most messages during scenarios, with additional details logged to the message log.

I need to do a bit more work first but I should be able to compile a new Windows build soon for players to try out.

Just got Polish forces working as a player option, with randomly generated German enemy units. It took a little doing because of the non-ASCII characters in Polish names. For now I have to normalize them to the nearest ASCII equivalents, but in the future I’ll extend the font and map the special characters so they are displayed properly.

My apologies for not posting anything recently and for not releasing weekly builds, but I have become well stuck-in to my new job, and my available development time has dwindled down to next to nothing. I have done a little bit of work, however, including planning out the crew system in detail.

Right now the player tank will have a crew randomly generated for it, but my plan is to allow the player to choose from a roster of possible crew members, each with slightly different starting stats. The total stats of all potential crewmembers will be equal, so it’s up to the player to choose either a balanced team or one that emphasizes one particular area. I’m going to try to focus on the player tank and crew from here on, and put allied units aside for the moment so that this core element is (hopefully) done right.